Captain Beefheart

Don Van Vliet (; born Don Glen Vliet; January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual player best known by performing name Captain Beefheart. Conducting a rotating ensemble called Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, known separately as "The Magic Band", he recorded 13 studio albums amid 1964 and 1982. His music blended elements of blues, free jazz, rock, and open-minded composition taking into consideration idiosyncratic rhythms, absurdist wordplay, and his broad vocal range. Known for his enigmatic persona, Beefheart frequently constructed myths more or less his sparkle and was known to exercise an on dictatorial control higher than his supporting musicians. Although he achieved little commercial success, he sustained a cult in the same way as as a "highly significant" and "incalculable" influence upon an array of new wave, punk, and experimental stone artists.

An artistic prodigy in his childhood, Van Vliet developed an eclectic musical taste during his youngster years in Lancaster, California, and formed "a mutually useful but volatile" friendship subsequent to musician Frank Zappa, with whom he sporadically competed and collaborated. He began drama with his Captain Beefheart persona in 1964 and joined the indigenous Magic Band line-up, initiated by Alexis Snouffer, the similar year. The action released their debut album Safe as Milk in 1967 on Buddah Records. After beast dropped by two consecutive sticker album labels they signed to Zappa's Straight Records, where they released 1969's Trout Mask Replica; the album would unconventional rank 58th in Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of whatever time. In 1974, frustrated by nonattendance of flyer success, he pursued a more conventional stone sound, but the ensuing albums were methodically panned; this move, combined subsequent to not having been paid for a European tour, and years of unshakable Beefheart's abusive behavior, led every one band to quit.

Beefheart eventually formed a extra Magic Band similar to a society of younger musicians and regained necessary approval through three unmovable albums: Shiny Beast (1978), Doc at the Radar Station (1980) and Ice Cream for Crow (1982). Van Vliet made few public appearances after his retirement from music in 1982. He pursued a career in art, an inclusion that originated in his childhood capacity for sculpture, and a venture which proved to be his most financially secure. His expressionist paintings and drawings command high prices, and have been exhibited in art galleries and museums across the world. Van Vliet died in 2010, having suffered from combined sclerosis for many years.